


Née Kitty Winter

by ancientreader



Category: Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle
Genre: F/F, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-28
Updated: 2018-06-28
Packaged: 2019-05-16 10:00:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,911
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14809152
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ancientreader/pseuds/ancientreader
Summary: TheMorning Post"had the first police-court hearing of the proceedings against Miss Kitty Winter on the grave charge of vitriol-throwing. Such extenuating circumstances came out in the trial that the sentence, as will be remembered, was the lowest that was possible for such an offence." ("The Adventure of the Illustrious Client")The world never did learn what happened after Kitty Winter's release.





	Née Kitty Winter

**Author's Note:**

  * For [alexcat](https://archiveofourown.org/users/alexcat/gifts).



> Dear alexcat, I started out fully intending to write you a Victorian comedy, and this is what came out instead. Whoops! At least it's a basically happy story, and I hope it gives you pleasure. Happy Holmestice!
> 
> Many thanks to [SCFrankles](https://archiveofourown.org/users/SCFrankles/pseuds/SCFrankles), who bent over backward to help me answer some of those annoying finicky questions that plague writers of ACD fic. Google-fu failed me, but SCFrankles did not. 
> 
> [ColebaltBlue](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ColebaltBlue/pseuds/ColebaltBlue) and [Sanguinity](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sanguinity/pseuds/sanguinity), as moderators of this exchange, had absolutely no obligation to do any research for me, but they did anyway, because they're like that, and it was a big help. Thank you! 
> 
> To REDACTED, as always, my sincere thanks for making me want to tear my hair out by finding the first draft unsatisfactory. To the extent that this is a better story now, that's because HER REDACTED SELF told me to fix it. 
> 
> For the purposes of this story, the anonymous wife in "Blanched Soldier" was a beard, and let's have no "Lion's Mane" nonsense about Watson passing beyond Holmes's ken. _Honestly._  
>   

(June, 1917)

I had my second cup of morning tea in hand and was looking out over the wet garden — the clouded light that had followed the rain made all the flowers seem to glow, like so many colored lanterns — when, at a muffled exclamation, I glanced over to find Holmes scowling at the _Times_.  

He had, as usual, aggrandized the paper to himself, so I had not yet seen it, and naturally I feared that there was some news, even more dreadful than usual, of the War; but his look was one of annoyance rather than of distress. “Have a care not to look at your bees with that expression,” I therefore told him; “they’ll flee their hives, never to return.”  Holmes had unbent a great deal since the happy change in our relations a decade and a half before, and I delighted thus to rally him. His own amusement at my teasing seemed sometimes to surprise him; he would shake his head, smiling downward, almost abashed. The effect enchanted me.

When he failed to respond, however —

“Oh! This is too much, it really is too much!” He was looking positively ferocious now; the bees might go as far as the Antipodes. I went to his side and took the paper from him.

It was immediately apparent what had excited his indignation. The Commons were about to vote on the Representation of the People Act; they were expected to pass it, and if the Lords followed suit, the long campaign in favor of woman suffrage would have been largely won. Holmes was generally indifferent to the swirl of politics except inasmuch as it informed his cases — but Lord Curzon, in opposition to the Act, had cited “the well-known views of no less an intellectual and scientific eminence than Sherlock Holmes.”

“I don’t think my tales of your exploits ever attributed to you any opinion concerning woman suffrage,” I said.

“Only a general disdain for the sex, never publicly disavowed.”

“She does say she’s found it useful to be underestimated.” I had no need to name the subject of that sentence.

“She makes the best of a bad situation, she means.”

I was not sure Holmes would agree entirely with himself — had he not often, for the sake of a case, found it advantageous to disguise himself as someone of low estate or meager intellect? — but it was not the moment to point that out. “Why don’t you write to Curzon?” I suggested, instead.

*

This exchange had had its genesis twelve years prior, in the early spring of 1905. I have published only one case from the early years of this century, for in 1903 came the change in my relations with Holmes that I have already mentioned; afterward, try as I might, I found it impossible to write about him without there creeping into my prose a certain tone, revealing far more than was wise. This narrative will eventually find its way into the vault of Cox & Co., along with accounts of a few cases that may perhaps be found instructive or amusing at such time as Holmes and I are both beyond the reach of scandal or law.

But what I now relate is not precisely the story of a case. My friend had just concluded the investigation whose particulars may be found among my papers, as “The Adventure of the Seventh Oyster.” The puzzle had been rather more entertaining than significant, and at its conclusion Holmes and I both found ourselves in high spirits. We betook ourselves to Simpson’s and then attended a violin-concert, pleasant though not memorable.

In short, it was an ordinary happy evening, made even happier when Holmes, as he so often did, confirmed my heart’s choice by demonstrating his essential courtesy and kindness. In recent days an old beggar-woman had taken up residence at our corner, where the deep doorway of an empty house afforded her some meager shelter; my friend had made it his business to look out a refuge for her, and on this evening, as we passed her on our way to dine, he pressed into her hand a paper bearing its address and a sum of money that would feed her for many days.

(How much I loved him in that moment! And yet I loved him at every moment, and with all my heart. Perhaps the paradox supplies an instance of those multiple infinities proposed by the mathematician Cantor, whose work Holmes has on several occasions attempted to explain to me, alas with small success.)

Not only the so-called respectable poor excited his compassion. As we made our way home after the concert, quite late, we were importuned by a young man, a lad really, who — to put the matter bluntly — had nothing to sell but himself. (Curiously, we were nowhere near Piccadilly, where boy-prostitutes generally ply their trade.) Many men, of course, respond to any such overture with contempt; some few resort to violence. Holmes thanked the young fellow as politely as he would have a lady who had offered him a cup of tea — and then pointed out to him a constable in plain clothes who was stationed perhaps fifty yards further along and who, by good fortune, happened to be looking in the other direction just then.

“Poor boy,” Holmes remarked to me when we had said good night to “Roger” (for so he, excruciatingly, called himself), “he must be very new to the life of the streets if he doesn’t even know to look for custom in Piccadilly.”

“Why didn’t you tell him?” Because Holmes had not mentioned Piccadilly, nor had I; but I did wonder at his failure to enlighten Roger, for the boy might have found at least relative safety in numbers, and eventually even made friends.

“Ah, John! In Piccadilly he would be a needle in a haystack; better for him to continue here, for I mean to have Wiggins look for him tomorrow. If Wiggins thinks him quick enough, and forms a good opinion of his character, we might make a place for him among the Irregulars.”

A good opinion of a margery-boy’s character! Perhaps my readers will scoff at the notion. But that was Holmes — he understood all too well what expedients men, and boys and women too, may seek when overwhelmed by troubles, and how little we ought to judge them. Too, I had been watching Sherlock Holmes for many years by then, and while my powers of observation would never equal his, I had advanced enough to admire the dexterity with which he had slipped half-a-crown into the pocket of Roger’s jacket. Roger would feel the coin’s weight, later, and perhaps wonder at his good luck.

It was no longer the custom for men to go about arm in arm, and I sadly regretted the change. But those who have been intimate friends for many years are well versed in each other’s speaking looks; the one I gave Holmes now made him scoff, but smilingly, and say: “I’m being practical. There’s no one among the Irregulars just now with entrée to that world.”

“Of course,” I agreed.

Neither of us for an instant believed the other. We went on our way still smiling; it really was a lovely night.

*

Holmes had no other cases, nor even any prospective clients, just then, but this didn’t trouble our pocketbooks: the times when we found ourselves searching every corner of the flat for stray ha’pennies were long past. It occurs to me now that in none of my tales of Sherlock Holmes have I described the economies to which we were often put in those days. I have given, I think, the impression that we were habitués of Simpson’s from the start of our association, but of course it wasn’t so. To consider the example of tinned meat, I will only say that neither Holmes nor I will have it in the house. And I remember the precise date of the morning when, in dressing myself, I realized that I need no longer sleep with my spare trousers under the mattress but rather could without incurring financial anxiety send them out to be pressed.

But old men digress.

We were, then, contentedly browsing over our papers and journals, anticipating a day of doing nothing much — Holmes had proposed a visit to the Natural History Museum — when Mrs. Hudson appeared to announce the arrival of a lady. Well! I have said we did not _need_ a client, and Holmes had learned to more or less enjoy a few days’ leisure without resort to the contents of his morocco-leather case, so I at least was not best pleased at the interruption. Still, those who came to Holmes were often enough in desperate straits — besides, my friend _was_ always happier when at his work — so we bade the lady enter and be seated.

From her plain, practical dress and confident carriage I surmised that she was one of the respectable office-girls being seen more and more often in London; but, though her gaze was direct, as she looked back and forth between my face and Holmes’s I saw her color rise, and her fingers tightened on the handle of her satchel. It was often thus — a client’s composure would give way before the prospect of describing some painful circumstance. My heart went out to her.

As for Holmes, he did not ask our visitor her name or her business; he only cocked his head, as if listening to a distant sound and trying to work out its source. I cleared my throat, but both he and the young lady preserved their silence. “Holmes?” I said at last; and, when he still did not speak, I turned to our visitor. “You have some difficulty with which Mr. Holmes can assist you, Miss . . .?”

“I reckon Mr. Holmes knows me,” she replied. “Don’t _you,_ Doctor?”

All at once, I did. For our respectable-seeming visitor was none other than Kitty Winter, whose help had been invaluable in bringing to an end the depredations of the vile Baron Adelbert Gruner, and who had seized her moment to destroy not only his career but his handsome face. Even now, as I write these words, I shudder to remember how he shrieked as the vitriol ate away his flesh.

Miss Winter raised her chin proudly, as if divining my thoughts; the anxiety that had shown itself just a few moments ago was entirely vanished. “I don’t regret it, Doctor,” she said. “You saw what he was; did you believe for an instant that he amused himself only with _ruining_ girls? I know for a fact that three of the faces in that album of his belonged to the dead. I am certain there were others. I’ve had two years in Newgate; I would have served twenty more with joy if it cost me that to finish him.”

Bold words! What was more extraordinary, Miss Winter had delivered them in the accents of the lady she made herself out to be. She sounded not a whit like the rough creature we had met three years before.

Holmes had leaned forward in his chair, resting his chin on his steepled hands, the better to contemplate our visitor; now he straightened again. “I congratulate you on your release, Miss Winter. But I don’t think you have a case for me, do you?”

“No, Mr. Holmes, I don’t. — You understand, I can tell how it is with you and Dr. Watson —”  

She spoke with entire conviction; I was too appalled to do more than gasp. As for Holmes, he actually drew back his lip in scorn. “I should have thought blackmail beneath you,” he said.

“Oh! No, sir, you mistake me.” She clasped her hands together in her lap, evidently trying to find some better form of words. The minute easing of tension on Holmes’s face informed me that he and I had arrived at similar hypotheses concerning what she meant to say, and in the next moment we were proved right:

“It’s only — In Newgate, you see, I made a friend. A friend to me the way Dr. Watson is a friend to you, Mr. Holmes, and turnabout. And we’ve got to keep ourselves, somehow, Janie and I — but she’s not well, and besides, what work can either of us get, being convicts? I was a lady’s maid when Adelbert Gruner seduced me, but I’ll never get a post again, and even if I could — I want a home life! I want what you have. Not half a life, at some fine lady’s beck and call.”

Her gaze on us was fierce. I am not sure that it had occurred to me, before this moment, to admire her courage.

“I can read and write and do my sums, but who’ll hire me to teach? I can sew, but my mother went blind sewing. I can whore” — I was irrationally shocked to hear the word spoken in our sitting-room — “but . . . I couldn’t make it pay enough, anyhow.” I thought, with a pang of conscience, that neither I nor Holmes had considered how Miss Winter must have earned her bread after Gruner abandoned her. It is one thing to be a Liane de Pougy, however notorious, another to ply the streets of the West End.

“‘Well,’ I thought, ‘Shinwell Johnson’s good enough to do a job for Mr. Holmes,’” Miss Winter went on; “‘then mayn’t I be?’” She stood, stooping, as if the movement pained her, and drew her arms protectively before herself. “I thank ye, sir, for yer kindness, and I hope ye won’t mind it that I passed the money on to one as needed it more’n me,” she said — _Miss Winter_ said, but it was the old beggar-woman from our street who stood before us, and whose voice we heard.

“That is remarkable,” Holmes owned, after a moment. His interest was up, I saw — indeed, he was practically vibrating.

But Miss Winter had not finished her demonstration. For now there appeared the margery-boy who had accosted us just the past evening: _his_ mincing manner, _his_ voice, offering indecencies that I don’t care to set down even here, though I have set down so much else. I believe both Holmes and I blushed scarlet; but on Miss Winter’s face I could see, until her impersonation was done, only salaciousness — salaciousness, and the despair of one who knows not when he will next be warm, and dry, and fed.

I found that I was holding my breath; I believe that, had a constable been present, he would have arrested Miss Winter for transvestism, so convincing a boy, in her neat jacket and walking-skirt, was she. — And had Bernhardt been present, she would have strewed roses at Miss Winter’s feet.

When Miss Winter had done, she sat down again, and in her own voice — though still in those refined accents with which she had surprised us — said:

“And don’t forget, Mr. Holmes, how I hid my intentions that night at Adelbert’s. Hid them from _you,_ ” she added, with emphasis.

“Your powers of impersonation are indeed remarkable,” Holmes replied, “but —”

“‘But’!” she cried. “Don’t say ‘But’!” All at once she was ablaze, and I was reminded of the fury with which she had revenged herself upon Gruner. I even braced myself to spring upon her, lest she attack Holmes; but in the next moment I saw that her emotion was not rage but the passion of one pleading the cause of a beloved. She was thinking of her Janie, I realized — with some fellow-feeling, for would I not have been as ardent to aid Holmes, were we in similar case?

“Trial me, then,” she said, more calmly. “Can _you_ disguise yourself as an old beggar-woman?” “Since you mention it, I can,” Holmes murmured, however without interrupting her. “As a nancy-boy?” Holmes said nothing. “As _this_?” She pointed to herself. “And you know there are matters of which women will speak only to other women. — I could be valuable to you, Mr. Holmes.”

“You’ll have to learn one thing, Miss Winter,” he replied.

“Anything!”

“If you wish to gain information, you must never interrupt the person from whom you wish to gain it. I was going to say, just before, ‘But if I am to employ you, then we must first discuss the conditions under which you are to be employed.’”

*

The particulars of the arrangement made that morning soon became obsolete, for while Holmes initially meant Miss Winter only to draw information from women servants, or from lady clients too bashful to confide their troubles unless one of their own sex was present, we learned quickly that she was even more clever than hot-tempered.

Her talents and skills proved indispensable on many occasions — most notably in the case I have related under the rubric of “The Shrunken Wedding Gown,” where she gathered valuable intelligence while en travesti as Jocko the telegraph boy. And as I have recorded in “The Affair of the Drunken Valet,” it was she who found the vials that enabled us to prove the complicity of the barrister’s envious brother.

She had almost no education. During her four years in service she had gleaned a little general knowledge of the world — but only a little;  she came to us woefully ignorant. Once she had money and occasional leisure, she read with an avidity that surprised me (it didn’t surprise Holmes; he understood her better than I did), but of course she could never entirely make up the deficiency, and at times it gave her trouble with respect to a case. In later years this was the one circumstance that would reliably draw out a fit of temper.

(I made the error, when she had been in Holmes’s employ for some months, of remarking that her disposition seemed much improved, and praising her for it. I got the sharp end of her tongue that day: “Anyone’s temper would improve,” she told me, “if she got decent work at a fair wage for the first time in her life.” — I laugh to see those words so tame, in pen and ink. Miss Winter adorned them liberally with billingsgate.)

Before 1906 was out, Miss Winter had become Holmes’s acknowledged apprentice — acknowledged among us, that is. She had taken the surname Emerson, but even so it was necessary to keep her out of the public eye: during her trial, her name had been on every scandal-monger’s lips, and the sensation-papers, whose readers would have been thrilled to hear of the “Female Holmes,” would have swarmed her and soon uncovered her past. Holmes’s wish to retire a few years later presented a conundrum, for neither of us liked to see him withdraw his aegis and leave her without a means of earning her keep; fortunately, his brother Mycroft stepped in. He had connexions in Boston; armed with letters of introduction to them, Miss Katherine Emerson and her friend removed to that city, where she set up a consultancy of her own. She and Sherlock continued to correspond, from time to time also exchanging telegrams when she sought his advice on a case.

It was Miss Winter, of course, who forced Holmes to revise his opinion of her sex. He inclined at first to think of her as a sport more or less in the Irene Adler mold, but she would have none of it, pointing out over and over what women were enabled to achieve whenever some small constraint was lifted from them. I believe that, equally with the force of her argument, it was her courage in maintaining her position although her opponent had the power to deprive her of her living that swayed him.   

But of course, my tales of Holmes’s cases had more than once hinted that he thought little of women — the very fact that Miss Irene Adler was _The_ Woman must have made that plain — and because Miss Winter’s work lay out of public view, so too did the changes in his views. Hence his exasperation on the day in 1917 with which this account begins.

He had written his letter to Lord Curzon before breakfast was done, and so great a hurry was he in that when Meg the housemaid came in to clear our dishes away, he sent her off to the post office instead. It was with the greatest difficulty that I prevailed upon him to let me make a copy of the letter first, and grateful I was that he had written briefly and to the point, for while I wrote he sighed and drummed his fingers on the table and then sighed again, until I was tempted to finish by sending him to stand on a stool in the corner like an errant schoolboy. It would have been no use to point out to him that the mail to London would not go for another two hours yet.

Holmes had written this:

_My dear Lord Curzon,_

_Grateful though I am to know your good opinion of my capacities, I must enter a demurral to your attempt to enlist me in the cause of opposition to woman suffrage._

_It is true that at one time I would have agreed with you. However, I am, as you so generously remark, a man of science, and as a man of science I must accept the evidence before me. I am persuaded by my experience that the abilities of the common run of women are equal to those of the common run of men, and consequently I find myself in support of their campaign._

_I remain,_

_Most sincerely yours,_

_Sherlock Holmes._

He never received any reply; but in the following February, when the Act came before the Lords, Curzon refused to speak for those in opposition. With its opponents thus demoralized, the Act passed by a vote of  134 to 71.

Holmes and I both like to think that his letter had something to do with that outcome; but if we are to be honest about it, then we must admit that Miss Kitty Winter’s hand it was that guided his pen.

*

Miss Winter and her friend had remained in England long enough to see Holmes and me off to Sussex upon his retirement. She called in at Baker Street one day shortly before our removal to find Holmes out, attending a lecture on the recently developed analytical technique of “chromatography,” and me sorting through the materials from his old cases, deciding which to discard and which to keep — Holmes, having boxed up all the items of scientific value, had declared himself indifferent to the rest. As it happened I had just worked my way round to the year 1902, and therefore to the case that introduced us to Miss Winter. Holmes had kept the album by means of which Miss Violet de Merville was finally brought to her senses concerning Adelbert Gruner — why he had kept it, I don’t know; I suppose he hadn’t so much made a decision as succumbed, without giving the matter a thought, to his general magpie inclination to collect. The Baron’s “souvenirs” could do no more good to anyone and might, in the wrong hands, do harm to many. I set the foul thing before the fireplace, meaning to burn it.

Miss Winter had barely set foot in the flat when she spotted it; she froze in the act of removing her gloves.

“My God,” she said. “Has that been here all this time?” I made to help her to the sofa, but she had already collected herself; she waved me off, giving no sign of her discomposure but the deliberation of her movements as she hung up her things.  

She stood looking down at the album for some time before she spoke. “It looks like nothing much, doesn’t it?” she said at last. “You could lay it out in your sitting room and let your guests leaf through. The leather’s good, too; I learned how to judge such things from the lady I was in service with. — I see you broke the lock. Or did Mr. Holmes do that?”

“Holmes did,” I said; “he had to show the album to Miss de Merville, and he didn’t think the lock worth the trouble of picking.”

“What a fool that girl was! I told her I didn’t give a damn for her — I didn’t then, and I don’t now; but if it hadn’t been for her foolishness Adelbert would be adding pages yet today.” She picked up the album and leafed through it, frowning. “What do you mean to do with it?”

I pointed to the fire.

“Good,” she replied; “but look here, do you mind if, first, I take out the pages he made about myself?”

I assented, of course, and she went to work at once with her pocket-knife.

“Do you still think of him, then?” It was an extraordinarily intimate question, and I don’t know what made me ask it: perhaps the state of the flat suggested a relaxation of normal constraints, or perhaps it was simply that we were soon to have an ocean between us, most likely forever.

Miss Winter looked up from studying the pages in her hand. “Do I _think_ of him? Of course I _think_ of him; it’s a funny thing to realize I owe a sort of debt to him, for if he hadn’t had his way with me I might still be a lady’s maid. But you’re wondering whether I _pine_ for him, aren’t you?”

I admitted that this was so.

“Crikey,” she said, under her breath, and held the excised pages out to me.

They were mortifying. On the first was a photographic portrait of her: her hair was down, and she lounged across the arms of a wing chair, en négligée. She was very lovely but the photograph might as well have been a French postcard. Worse yet was the letter attached to the second page, by comparison with which the portrait might have been that of a cloistered nun. The letter was written in Miss Winter’s hand.

An Army man does see a great deal, so such things were not altogether foreign to my experience. Sitting beside the lady in question, who was by way of being a colleague of Holmes’s, was another matter, however. I hastily gave the album pages back to her.

“Now what do you suppose makes a girl willing to make a man offerings like those?” Miss Winter asked.

I shook my head.

“Think of my life when I met him, then. What do you imagine the days of a lady’s maid are like? They are all ‘Yes, ma’am,’ ‘No, ma’am,’ ‘Right away, ma’am.’ ‘That dress looks most fetching on you, ma’am.’ Days — weeks — sometimes months — went by when no one asked my real opinion of anything, or noticed when my feet were sore, or drew my attention to a picture or a flower that might please me.”

“Adelbert Gruner paid you attention, then.”

“‘Attention,’” she repeated, scoffingly. “No. ‘Attention’ might be watching the sway of a girl’s hips as she passes, and giving her a wink. Or giving her a card with sentimental verses out of a guide to courting. That’s flattering enough in its way, but plain flattery wasn’t Adelbert’s trick. No, what he did was to make us feel ourselves seen — seen as real, proper persons, I mean. We women are desperate to be seen, Dr. Watson. You can’t imagine how rarely it happens or how it enlarges our spirits to feel it.”

Miss Winter smiled a little. “What a fine lady Miss de Merville was, and proud and educated too. But he got his hooks in her just as he did in so many low-born girls. I wonder, sometimes, whether her life might have been, in just one way, something like a lady’s maid’s.”

She tore the album pages across once, and fed the long strips to the fire.

*

Holmes, having read this over, reminds me that I have omitted a surprising pendant to Miss Winter’s tale. A day or two after her visit it occurred to me to wonder aloud how, given that she had only just left Newgate and had no money, she had managed to acquire the plain but well-made clothing in which she had called on us.  

Holmes had opened his mouth — I got him to admit, later, that he was about to describe a complicated stratagem of his own devising, which, he had satisfied himself, Miss Winter must have used — when we realized that Mrs. Hudson, who had been dusting the bookshelves, was laughing.  

As one, we turned to her.

“Bless you both,” she said, “you don’t believe there’s only one man in the world like Baron Adelbert Gruner, do you? Most of us, I daresay, have had a friend hard done by that way. Maybe Kitty was right to throw that vitriol, and maybe she wasn’t, but I went to see her in prison all the same, and when she came to me after, to tell me what she hoped for from you, don’t you think I found it in my heart to lend her the money for those clothes?”

With which our landlady returned to her dusting and said no more.

Holmes and I too sat for some time in silence. — It happens, from time to time, that one has the sensation of powerful currents, flowing unseen, beneath one’s feet.

 

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> Kitty's crime in "Illustrious Client" has a specific name, would you believe? It's called vitriolage, and between 1864 and 1910 exactly one woman was convicted of it: Bridget Crothy, in 1866. She got seven years in Newgate; I went easier on Kitty, because jeez. You can read more about Miss Crothy [here](https://www.digitalpanopticon.org/search?e0.type.t.t=root&e1.type.t.t=tried&e0.gender.tg.x=&e0.earliest.d.ld=&e0.earliest.d.lm=&e0.earliest.d.ly=1864&e0.earliest.d.hd=&e0.earliest.d.hm=&e0.earliest.d.hy=1910&e1.offence_category.to.x=vitriolage).
> 
> [Liane de Pougy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liane_de_Pougy) was a famous courtesan, one of the era's _grandes horizontales_. She had a difficult and often tragic life, but Dr. Watson wasn't to know that.
> 
> Lord Curzon was head of the [National League for Opposing Woman Suffrage](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_League_for_Opposing_Woman_Suffrage). The legislative progress of the [Representation of the People Act of 1918](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Representation_of_the_People_Act_1918) was as I describe it in the story, apart from Holmes's intervention. What really happened is that Curzon didn't want to alienate the Commons: so saith Wikipedia, anyway.
> 
> You might have noticed that Watson says that with it the fight for suffrage would have been "largely" won. The 1918 Act gave the vote only to women property owners over the age of thirty. Full suffrage didn't come till 1928. 
> 
> Kitty's outfit on that first visit to Holmes and Watson looks something like the "1903 walking suit" (scroll down)  
> [here](https://vintagefashionguild.org/fashion-timeline/1900-to-1910/). Isn't it handsome?  
> Dr. W.'s hot tip for pressing your extra trousers economically is [for real](http://www.victorianlondon.org/cassells/cassells-1.htm#four). 
> 
> Canned meat existed, and if we are to judge by the description [here](http://cookit.e2bn.org/historycookbook/23-116-victorians-Food-facts.html) (scroll down to #18) (thanks, SCFrankles!), early on it would have been nasty stuff indeed. I imagine it was better by Watson and Holmes's day, but even so ...


End file.
